Breakfast with bats

Julie, a wildlife carer in Melbourne, has spent the last four years fostering orphaned grey-headed flying foxes (also known as fruit bats). She bottle-feeds them six times a day, moisturises their wings with baby lotion and keeps them stimulated with kids’ toys. In the wild, mother bats would lick them clean, but Julie draws the line at that! All going well, at about two months of age they will go to a larger crèche before being released into the flying fox colony at Melbourne’s Yarra Bend Park. The species, a vitally important pollinator for our native forests, has suffered significant population decline and is now listed as vulnerable. Julie’s work is more important than ever.